ATTLEBORO, Mass. (AP) — In the final minutes of his life, Odin Lloyd sent a series of texts to his sister.

"Did you see who I was with?" said the first, at 3:07 a.m. June 17. "Who?" she finally replied.

"NFL," he texted back, then added: "Just so you know."

It was 3:23 a.m. Moments later, Lloyd would be dead in what a prosecutor called an execution-style shooting orchestrated by New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez because his friend talked to the wrong people at a nightclub. Hernandez was charged Wednesday with murder and could face life in prison, if convicted.

Hernandez was cut from the NFL team less than two hours after he was arrested and led from his North Attleborough home in handcuffs, and nine days after Lloyd's body was discovered by a jogger in a remote area of an industrial park not far from Hernandez's home. The 2011 Pro Bowl selection had signed a five-year contract last summer with the Patriots worth $40 million.

His attorney, Michael Fee, called the case circumstantial during a Wednesday afternoon court hearing packed with reporters, curiosity seekers and police officers. Fee said there was a "rather hysterical atmosphere" surrounding the case and urged the judge to disregard his client's celebrity status as he asked for Hernandez, 23, to be released on bail.

The judge, though, ordered Hernandez held without bail on the murder charge and five weapons counts.

Hernandez was scheduled to appear at a bail review hearing Thursday afternoon in Fall River court, according to Bernie Sullivan, spokesman for the Bristol County sheriff.

On Wednesday, Hernandez stood impassively with his hands cuffed in front of him as Bristol County Assistant District Attorney Bill McCauley laid out a detailed timeline of the events, cobbled together from sources including witnesses, surveillance video, text messages and data from cellphone towers.

Lloyd, 27, a semi-pro football player with the Boston Bandits, had known Hernandez for about a year and was dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancee, the mother of Hernandez's 8-month-old baby, McCauley said.

On June 14, Lloyd went with Hernandez to a Boston club, Rumor. McCauley said Hernandez was upset Lloyd had talked to people there with whom Hernandez had trouble. He did not elaborate.

Two days later, McCauley said, on June 16, Hernandez texted two unidentified friends. He asked them to hurry to Massachusetts from Connecticut. At 9:05 p.m., a few minutes after the first message to his friends, Hernandez texted Lloyd to tell him he wanted to get together, McCauley said.

Later, surveillance footage from Hernandez's home showed his friends arrive and go inside. Hernandez, holding a gun, then told someone in the house he was upset and couldn't trust anyone anymore, the prosecutor said.

At 1:12 a.m., the three left in Hernandez's rented silver Nissan Altima, McCauley said. Cell towers tracked their movements to a gas station off the highway. There, he said, Hernandez bought blue Bubblicious gum.

At 2:32 a.m., they arrived outside Lloyd's home in Boston and texted him that they were there. McCauley said Lloyd's sister saw him get into Hernandez's car.

From there, surveillance cameras captured images of what the prosecutor said was Hernandez driving the silver Altima through Boston. As they drove back toward North Attleborough, Hernandez told Lloyd he was upset about what happened at the club and didn't trust him, McCauley said. That was when Lloyd began sending texts to his sister.

Surveillance video showed the car entering the industrial park and at 3:23 a.m. driving down a gravel road near where Lloyd's body was found. Four minutes later, McCauley said, the car emerged. During that period, employees working an overnight shift nearby heard several gunshots, McCauley said.

McCauley said Lloyd was shot multiple times, including twice from above as he was lying on the ground. He said five .45 caliber casings were found at the scene.

Authorities did not say who fired the shots or identify the two others with Hernandez.

At 3:29 a.m., surveillance at Hernandez's house showed him arriving, McCauley said.

"The defendant was walking through the house with a gun in his hand. That's captured on video," he said.

His friend is also seen holding a gun, and neither weapon has been found, McCauley said.

Then, the surveillance system stopped recording, and footage was missing from the six to eight hours after the slaying, he said.

The afternoon of June 17, the prosecutor said, Hernandez returned the rental car, offering the attendant a piece of blue Bubblicious gum when he dropped it off. While cleaning the car, the attendant found a piece of blue Bubblicious gum and a shell casing, which he threw away. Police later searched the trash bin and found the gum and the casing. The prosecutor said it was tested and matched the casings found where Lloyd was killed.

As McCauley outlined the killing, Lloyd's family members cried and held each other. Two were so overcome that they had to leave the courtroom.

The Patriots said in a statement after Hernandez's arrest but before the murder charge was announced that cutting Hernandez was "the right thing to do."

"Words cannot express the disappointment we feel knowing that one of our players was arrested as a result of this investigation," it said.

Hernandez, originally from Bristol, Conn., was drafted by the Patriots in 2010 out of the University of Florida, where he was an All-American.

During the draft, one team said it wouldn't take him under any circumstances, and he was passed over by one club after another before New England picked him in the fourth round. Afterward, Hernandez said he had failed a drug test in college — reportedly for marijuana — and was up front with teams about it.

A Florida man filed a lawsuit last week claiming Hernandez shot him in the face after they argued at a strip club in February.

Hernandez became a father on Nov. 6 and said he intended to change his ways: "Now, another one is looking up to me. I can't just be young and reckless Aaron no more. I'm going to try to do the right things."

Associated Press writers Bridget Murphy in Boston and Howard Ulman in North Attleborough contributed to this report.

In hopes of encouraging a reduction in nuclear stockpiles, researchers have proposed a new method to verify nuclear disarmament without revealing classified information

By Susan Matthews 27 June 2013

Pres. Barack Obama has proposed that both the U.S. and Russia continue to deplete their nuclear weapons reserves, encouraging a one-third reduction to arsenal sizes. His June 19 proposal, which did not yet specify a time line for destruction of the weapons reduction, expands on the 2010 New START Treaty between Russia and the U.S., which calls for each country to possess no more than 1,550 warheads by 2018.

Efforts to cut stockpiles and thus decrease the risk of accidental nuclear detonations and launches have so far been hampered by risks posed by the verification process. Verification regimes require the exchange of classified information, which could encourage nuclear proliferation if it ended up in the wrong hands. So, a team of scientists from Princeton University has outlined a new verification system that would release no classified details about the weapons.

How to confirm destruction without risking proliferation has been an issue for several years, says Robert Goldston, a physicist at Princeton and co-principle investigator on the project. To prevent the release of classified information, the current method for checking compliance counts delivery systems for warheads, not the warheads themselves. Certain proposed systems make classified measurements and then feed the information directly to a computing system that records only the final verdict. But it is easier for a host country to fake the process or for others to snoop on the system when it relies on a computer, says Princeton physicist Alexander Glaser, the project’s other principal investigator. So the researchers came up with a “zero-knowledge” verification system in which the inspector learns nothing classified.

The inspector would visit the host country, which would have a device called a neutron beamer ready. Passing neutrons through a warhead creates a signature: nuclear material absorbs some neutrons, and fission deflects some neutrons, scattering them. The number of neutrons that reaches a detector reveals if the warhead is nuclear. Unfortunately, this signature number is classified because physicists could work backward from it to understand both what materials are being used and how fission is occurring, essentially deconstructing the bomb’s contents.

The process of concealing the classified signature number borrows from a simple principle: Imagine having to confirm two bags of blue marbles are equal without knowing the number of marbles in them. Have someone add a set number of red marbles to both bags without telling you how many. Then, with your eyes closed count the number of marbles in each bag. If the totals are equal, you will know that the bags started off with identical numbers of blue marbles. In the new nuclear verification process, before inspection the host country and the inspector would agree on a number, termed N-max, which would confirm a warhead is nuclear. N-max is the sum of the signature neutrons (blue marbles) and an unknown number of preloaded bubbles that indicate neutrons (red marbles) that will be added to each count to disguise the true number in the signature. The process is first tested on a confirmed nuclear weapon, so that all subsequent warheads that reach N-max can be determined to be nuclear as well.

British UFO Document Release Designed to Deflect Public and Media Interest Says Former Ministry of Defence UFO Specialist

* Reuters is not responsible for the content in this press release.

Wed Jun 26, 2013 7:00am EDT

British UFO Document Release Designed to Deflect Public and Media Interest Says Former Ministry of Defence UFO Specialist

PR NewswireWASHINGTON, June 26, 2013

A claim by the British Ministry of Defence that UFOs have no defense significance is "designed solely to keep Parliament, the media and the public off our backs," according to former MoD UFO Desk administrator Nick Pope.

Pope's startling statement was in response to the MoD's release last week of what it says is its final batch of UFO documents. Official MoD spokesmen and one self-styled UFO expert, David Clarke, claim that the MoD found no evidence of a UFO threat to the UK and, therefore, closed its UFO Desk. The subsequent, widely-publicized declassification of its UFO documents—the implication being that nothing remained hidden—was intended to demonstrate the MoD's public transparency on the UFO issue.

In reality, Pope says, "the UK's Freedom of Information Act contains wide-ranging exemptions covering areas such as defense, security and intelligence" and the newly-available documents had already been "judged to be unclassified" before their release.

Regarding David Clarke, Pope says, "Some people would probably use the term 'useful idiot' to describe his parroting the MoD 'no defense significance' sound bite."

These and other provocative comments by Pope have just been published in an article by UFOs and Nukes researcher Robert Hastings, who discovered a credible UFO involvement in the famous Rendlesham Forest/RAF Bentwaters case, which occurred in Suffolk, England.

Hastings interviewed the two U.S. Air Force air traffic controllers on duty at Bentwaters during a week of UFO activity there, and the nearby forest, in December 1980, who say they tracked a bona fide UFO on radar and saw the object hover—it appeared as an orange-colored sphere—before it raced away.

Hastings says that the UFO later hovered near the USAF's Weapons Storage Area (WSA), containing tactical nuclear bombs, and directed laser-like beams down into the facility. Bentwaters' former deputy base commander, now-retired Col. Charles Halt, first acknowledged the dramatic incident in 1991, saying that he had heard frantic radio chatter from Security Policemen at the WSA, describing the UFO and the beams, while he was investigating reports of strange lights in nearby Rendlesham Forest.

Hastings says, "If the incident at the WSA actually occurred, and it appears that it did, then UFOs do indeed pose a defense threat to the UK."

...Regarding David Clarke, Pope says, "Some people would probably use the term 'useful idiot' to describe his parroting the MoD 'no defense significance' sound bite."...

This is a little unfair on Dr David Clarke.

He (Clarke) has always had a skeptical outlook to the whole ufo scene. Anyone who has spent time in the British ufology will know that he and his colleague Andy Roberts approached the phenomena from a different perspective.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is under investigation for allegedly leaking classified information about a covert cyberattack on Iran's nuclear facilities, according to media reports.

Retired Marine Gen. James "Hoss" Cartwright has been told he is a target of the probe, NBC News and The Washington Post reported Thursday. A "target" is someone a prosecutor or grand jury has substantial evidence linking to a crime and who is likely to be charged.

The Justice Department referred questions to the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore, where a spokeswoman, Marcia Murphy, declined to comment.

The investigation of the leak about the Iran cyberattack is one of a number of national security leak investigations that have been started by the Obama administration, including ones involving The Associated Press and Fox News.

In June 2012, the New York Times reported that Cartwright was a crucial player in the cyber operation called Olympic Games, started under President George W. Bush.

According to the Times, Obama ordered the cyberattacks sped up, and in 2010 an attack using a computer virus called Stuxnet temporarily disabled 1,000 centrifuges that the Iranians were using to enrich uranium.

Congressional leaders demanded a criminal probe into who leaked the information, and Obama said he had zero tolerance for such leaks. Republicans said senior administration officials had leaked the details to bolster the president's national security credentials during the 2012 campaign.

The Times said Cartwright was one of the crucial players who had to break the news to Obama and Vice President Joe Biden that Stuxnet at one point had escaped onto the Internet.

An element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran's Natanz plant and sent it out on the Internet, the Times reported. After the worm escaped onto the Internet, top administration officials met to consider whether the program had been fatally compromised.

Obama asked if the program should continue, and after hearing the advice of top advisers, decided to proceed.

Cartwright, a four-star general, was cleared in February 2011 of misconduct involving a young aide. An anonymous accuser had claimed Cartwright acted inappropriately during a 2009 overseas trip on which the aide traveled as a military assistant. Several sources confirmed that the former aide was a young woman.

The Pentagon inspector general quickly cleared Cartwright of the most serious allegations, which involved claims that he may have had an improper physical relationship with the woman. The report did find that Cartwright mishandled an incident in which the aide, drunk and visibly upset, visited his Tbilisi, Georgia, hotel room alone and either passed out or fell asleep on a bench at the foot of his bed. Cartwright denied any impropriety and was later cleared of all wrongdoing.

Cartwright, once considered the leading candidate to become Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, resigned from the military in August 2011.

NBC said Cartwright did not respond to request for comment and that his attorney, former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig, said he had no comment.

Police in New Zealand who feared they were being called by a gagged hostage rushed to a house to find a woman had mistakenly applied superglue instead of cold sore cream.

By Paul Chapman, Wellington9:14AM BST 28 Jun 2013

The woman, in the southern city of Dunedin, could only grunt as she made a midnight emergency call.

"Ambulance received a call but, due to the muffled speech, they were unsure whether it was a medical event or whether someone had been gagged," said Senior Sergeant Steve Aitken.

It had been a frightening experience for the woman because her breathing was impeded by a heavy cold, he said.

Speaking after treatment at Dunedin Hospital, the 64 year old woman said that while fumbling for a tube of cold sore cream in the middle of the night, she had mistakenly picked up one that held superglue.

"I have all my ointments in a tray in the cupboard, so I got out of bed and I dived into the tray.

"I couldn't smell it because I was blocked up.

"And then I got into bed and thought: what have I put on my mouth?" The woman, who spoke to New Zealand's TV3 channel, said she then discovered her mouth was glued shut and dialled the emergency number.

"I couldn't speak on the phone, so I couldn't tell them where I lived.

"I couldn't tell them my phone number.

"The communication was 'Do you live in Dunedin?' and I grunted 'mmm', and then the lady went through all the suburbs and then all the streets. She was very, very patient.

"I had to tap on the phone, one tap for no and two taps for yes, and then it took a long time to narrow down the streets and then all the numbers too."

Officers first sent a team of police dog handlers to the house in the suburb of St Kilda, fearing the woman had been gagged during a violent attack.

June 27, 2013 — Of course Twitter and Facebook are all the rage, but the power of social networks didn't start just in the digital age. A new study on squirrel monkeys reported in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, on June 27 finds that monkeys with the strongest social networks catch on fastest to the latest in foraging crazes. They are monkey trendsters.

The researchers, led by Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews, made the discovery by combining social network analysis with more traditional social learning experiments. By bringing the two together, they offer what they say is the first demonstration of how social networks may shape the spread of new cultural techniques. It's an approach they hope to see adopted in studies of other social animals.

"Our study shows that innovations do not just spread randomly in primate groups but, as in humans, are shaped by the monkeys' social networks," Whiten said.

Whiten, along with Nicolas Claidière, Emily Messer, and William Hoppitt, traced the monkeys' social networks by recording which monkeys spent time together in the vicinity of "artificial fruits" that could be manipulated to extract tempting food rewards. Sophisticated statistical analysis of those data revealed the monkeys' social networks, with some individuals situated at the heart of the network and others more on the outside. The researchers rated each of the monkeys on their "centrality," or social status in the network, with the highest ratings going to monkeys with the most connections to other well-connected individuals.

The artificial fruits could be opened in two different ways, either by lifting a little hatch on the front or by pivoting it from side to side. The researchers trained the alpha male in one group of monkeys on the lift technique, while the leader in another group was trained on the pivot method. They then sent them back to their groups and watched to see how those two methods would catch on in the two groups.

More central monkeys with the strongest social ties picked up the new methods more successfully, the researchers found. They were also more likely than peripheral monkeys to learn the method demonstrated by their trained alpha leaders.

Whiten said the squirrel monkeys are a good species for these studies because of their natural inquisitiveness. They also lead rather intense social lives.

The researchers now hope to extend their studies to focus on the squirrel monkeys in different contexts -- while foraging, moving, and resting, for example -- and how those contexts might influence the spread of innovations. They suspect they might even find evidence for different monkey subcultures.

"If there are subgroups within the network, then what appear to be mixed behaviors at the group level could in fact be different behaviors for different subgroups -- what could be called subcultures," Whiten said.

...Regarding David Clarke, Pope says, "Some people would probably use the term 'useful idiot' to describe his parroting the MoD 'no defense significance' sound bite."...

This is a little unfair on Dr David Clarke.

He (Clarke) has always had a skeptical outlook to the whole ufo scene. Anyone who has spent time in the British ufology will know that he and his colleague Andy Roberts approached the phenomena from a different perspective.

HAL

Good morning HAL

I don't know enough about Dr. Clarke to address this. Thank you for the post.